Basics of Botany

Hydroponics and the Botanists who work there are important to the station, especially in longer rounds. Botanists grow plants that the Chef can use for food. Without botany, the station will have to live off of beef jerky and space twinkies, or starve to death.

Your Area

Hydroponics is divided into two rooms. The big southern section is where you'll spend most of your time growing goods. Trays are available where you grow plants and two vending machines, one with seeds and the other with miscellaneous items such as nutrients and tools for your job. The bio-generator can be used to grind plants and produce things for the station. In tandem is the seed dispenser used to reproduce your product. The northern area is where you can grab most of the equipment needed to work in botany.

Plants require nutrients (fertilizer) and water to grow. They are also bothered by pests and weeds.
Trays come equipped with alerts that flash specific colors to tell you what's happening with your plant.

Plant Bag: Collects up to 50 items or 100 seeds from your harvest. Useful for moving those into the fridge or biogenerator.

Wrench: Used to move your trays around.

Wirecutters: Used to set up the irrigation system. If 30u or more of water is put into trays while the irrigation is set up, water will be shared across trays. This will also distribute things like mutagen and plant killer.

Hatchet: Chops tower-caps into planks, chops other things. This is also a robust tool that fits in pockets.

Shovel: Digs up grass floors and cleaning the dirt.

Spade: Removes and destroys plants in a tray.

All-In-One Grinder: This is how you extract reagents from plants - throw them in and hit the "grind" button.

Portable Seed Extractor: This can harvest and pick up plants and turn up to 100 plants into seeds. Less efficient than the machine.

Plant growing 101

Take some seeds from the vendor and put them into the trays. Now, take a look at the try with a plant analyzer. For now, you only need to pay attention to the bottom five stats - Water/Nutrition and Weeds/Toxic/Pest levels.
Now, fill a bucket from the water tank and grab fertilizer from the vending machine. You get rid of weeds with the cultivator and remove pests with pest spray. Chemistry can give you better chemicals for this, which will be explained later in the guide.
Some plants have a varied growth times, such as wheat growing faster while watermelons or apple trees take a little longer before you can harvest from them.
Once your tray flashes green, you're set to harvest. If you want to replicate the plant to continue growing more, just insert it into the seed extractor.

Biogenerator

The Biogenerator makes items out of the nutriment in plants. As a rule of thumb: More nutriment = more biomass. Watermelons and pumpkins are commonly used due to their 20% nutriment boost trait.
To get biomass, grab a spare bucket and equip the machine with it, then use the plant bag to put fruits inside.
If you somehow run out of fertilizer in the vendors, remember you can print the three standard fertilizers here. Keep in mind that you can craft a whole bunch of useful items from the leather/cloth sheets the biogenerator creates.

DNA Extractor

The DNA extractor allows you to extract and modify seed stats and traits. This machine is what lets you become a Chemist on speed.

Stats, reagents and traits

Three things determine how your plant will turn out: Their stats, reagents and traits.

Stats

Stats determine whether your plants are small and grow slowly, or are big and fast-growing.

Click expand to see what stats do:

Potency: The most important stat (0 to 100). This affects the amount of chemicals in the plant, though some have additional effects, such as stun length for bananas.

To get the amount of a given chemical in a plant, multiply the reagent in the chart by the potency: for example, 10% nutriment will be 5 nutriment at 50 potency.

Yield: How much product you get each harvest. Between 0 and 10. Pay attention to this, because if it drops to 0, you won't harvest anything.

Production Speed: How fast your plant reaches harvest. Between 1 and 10 -- the lower the faster. The plant has to wait (Production Speed) age cycles before each harvest.

Maturation Speed: Age cycles before the plant can start production. The first harvest will be (Maturation Speed + Production Speed).

Lifespan: When the age is above lifespan, the plant starts losing health. Between 10 and 100. Only important for plants with the Perennial Growth trait.

Age: Age of the plant. Only relevant in terms of the lifespan stat.

Endurance: Max health. Between 10 and 100. Not very useful, unless you leave your garden often.

Weed growth rate: Determines how quickly weeds grow in the plant tray. Only relevant with very high values.

Weed vulnerability: The higher, the more easily a plant is overtaken by weeds. Only relevant with very high values.

Reagents/Content

This determines what chemicals are present in a grown plant - the DNA extractor lets you extract and splice these.
With a bit of creativity, you can mix your own mutagen, produce unique healing chemicals or turn tomatoes into napalm grenades. Solid Chemistry knowledge will help you out immensely.
For a detailed list, check out: Plant reference chart

Traits

Traits give your plants unique properties. There are plenty - Perennial Growth for example lets you harvest plants multiple times.
These can be transferred, just like reagents.

Click expand to see a list of traits:

Perennial Growth: Plants with this trait can be harvested more than once.

Weed Adaptation: The plant acquires weed-like properties, making it not need nutrients. Plant growth doesn't get slowed by weeds and it can't be overtaken by them.

Fungal Vitality: The plant acquires mushroom-like properties, making it not need light or water. Minimum yield of 1.

Separated Chemicals: Makes plant reagents not react until squashed. Otherwise, they will mix on harvest.

Liquid Contents: Causes the plant to squash when thrown or slipped on, applying the reagents inside on the target and destroying the plant.

Gaseous Decomposition: Plants with this trait emit a smoke cloud when squashed, spewing reagents everywhere. Requires Liquid Contents to be useful. Only available through Strange seeds.

Densified Chemicals: Doubles the reagent capacity of the plant.

Slippery Skin: Causes the plant, or any products of the plant, to become slippery. The stun time is (Potency * 0.08), divided by 3 unless the plant has lube or is a banana. Maximum stun is 7 seconds.

Hypodermic Prickles: Plants with this trait will sting when thrown, transferring a portion of their chemicals to the target.

Capacitive Cell Production: Plants with this trait can be made into batteries with the addition of wire. Electrical Activity increases the cell's maximum charge.

Electrical Activity: Gives the plant electrical charge, making it recharge batteries when eaten; it will also electrocute on slip if it also has Slippery Skin and on hit if it has Liquid Contents.

Bluespace Activity: Gives the plant bluespace properties, making it teleport people hit if the plant has Liquid Contents, and on slip if it has Slippery Skin. Max radius is determined by potency.

Pest Removal

Mutation

E-Z-Nutrient: Makes your plant mutate once every time it's ready for harvesting, and has no effect on the yield.

Left 4 Zed: Makes your plant mutate twice, but the yield will be 1 at best - if the plant's yield is 0, then nothing is produced! You'll have to use another mutagen to harvest the normal yield of the plant.

Unstable Mutagen: Used to randomly mutate plants - 5u for a chance to change the plant type, 1u/2u to only change stats.

Radium and Uranium: Also usable for mutation (10u for plant type, 2u/5u for stats), but damages plants and adds toxicity. Radium is more damaging.

Plant Meds

Ash: Heals your plant and kills weeds, but adds only half a unit of nutrient.

Charcoal: Makes your plant less toxic. You can get it by whining to anyone who works in Medbay.

The bad stuff

Plant-B-Gone, Sulphuric Acid, Fluorosulfuric Acid: Damages the plant, adds toxicity and kills weeds. What do you think would happen?

Fluorine, Chlorine: Same as above, but also drains water.

Phosphorus: Same as Fl/Cl, but adds nutrients instead of toxicity. Just use a spade.

Napalm: This is just going downhill. Unless your plant has the fireproof trait, you might as well space the whole tray.

Strange Reagent: Spawns something hungry.

Beekeeping

Bees are gentle, hard-working animals that help plants pollinate and produce sweet honey to survive the long cold winters.

Bees in space, on the other hand, are far more aggressive, but all the more useful: since there is no winter in space (as far as we know) all honey produced by bees can be harvested, making beekeeping really easy. They have also outgrown carrying pollen, a largely obsolete task given the small quarters and relatively strong air currents on space stations, and have since evolved to help plants in their fruition phase, granting boost to the potency of their products. They are a great addition to any hydroponic farm that can afford them.

The birds and the bees

To start keeping your bees, you will need to procure yourself a queen bee . They can be obtained from the special beekeper starter pack crate, available at Cargo for 1500 points. The crate contains:

The queen bee.

An Apiary for the bees to live in, as well as 3 honeycomb frames .

A beekeeper suit, which will protect one person from bee stings.

A flyswatter, a very robust tool against small, fast insects.

Additional suits can be ordered for 1000 points a pair.
Additional apiaries can be built for 40 wooden planks each, and additional frames for 5 planks. Each apiary can carry maximum 3 frames.
BEE careful: the Apiary from a crate will deploy as soon as the crate is opened. You will need to unwrench the bolts if you want to move it.

Once you have deployed your Apiary, pick up the queen bee and gently intruce her to her new home. Assuming some plants are around to sustain a hive, she will get right to work.

Sweet slave labour

Once your queen bee is at home producing the workforce and there is plenty of plants to procure nectar from, it's time to reap the benefits.

Examining an apiary will present you with information regarding the colony:

Resources: goes from 0 to 100, and reflects how much nectar the bees have currently stored.

Resources towards a cell: in percentage points, reflects how much of the needed nectar for honeycomb production has been harvested.

Resources towards a bee: in percentage points, reflects how much of the needed nectar for a new bee has been harvested. Always half of a honeycomb.

Total honeycombs: How many honeycombs are currently in the Apiary. If this line isn't present, there are none.

Bees are half as cheap for an hive to produce than a honeycomb, and though their production is based on chance, it is very likely for a hive to overproduce bees as long as they have room for more.
The maximum number of bees a hive can support is half the maximum number of honeycombs. Since each honeycomb frame can support 10 honeycomb clusters, and each apiary can house 3 frames, the maximum number of bees is either 5, 10 or 15, and the maximum number of honeycombs is 10, 20 or 30. For early honey production, it is advised to put just one frame in the apiary.

To harvest honey, simply remove a honeycomb frame. Each honeycomb cluster provides 5 units of honey once processed in a grinder.

The fruits of our labour

So, what CAN you do with honey?

Mead, a fermented drink from honey produced with universal enzymes. Good alcohol content. Honeybun, a pastry. Honey nut bar, a healthy snack made with oats, nut free.

Eating honey heals you twice as fast as Omnizine, without the risk of a deadly overdose!

You can still go into a diabetic (sugar) coma, but you'd have to eat absurd amounts.

More bees, MORE BEES

Once you have a Queen Bee, you don't need to order more from cargo - you can force them to reproduce by mitosis!
To do so, you need Royal Bee Jelly, made from 40u of honey and 10u of Unstable Mutagen (resulting in 5u). Injecting the queen with at least 5u will make her split into two bees, allowing you to expand your bee empire.
You can then build more Apiaries out of wood to house them.

Miracles of biology

What separates Space Bees from normal bees is that they can bio-synthesize any reagent!
By simply injecting a queen bee with 5u of the desired chemical, the queen will transfer the mutation to all its bees; they will then inject a small amount of that chemical when stinging people, and their honeycombs will contain 5u of it on top of the honey.

Advanced Botany

This is where you get to PLAY GOD and mess with the stats, reagents and traits of plants.

Using the DNA manipulator

1. Go to the locker in the back and take out the box of plant data disks.
2. Load a disk into the machine along with any seed of choice.
3. Extract any gene, this will destroy the seed and save it to the disk.
4. Put in another seed.
5. You can now modify the seed's stats and genes based on what's on the plant data disk.

Useful genes to extract at roundstart:

The wheat in the seed vendor has 1 production speed

Tower Caps have naturally high endurance and resistance and 50 potency

The tobacco in the seed vendor has 10 yield

Apples have perennial growth

NOTE:Not all stats are readily transferable: potency for example is capped at 50% on the standard machine.
To up your potency cap, upgrade the machine with the help of RnD: each of its three components (manipulator, scanner, laser) will up the cap by 5% multiplied by their research tier;
Machine base is 35%, all T1 components net +(5%x1)x3= 15% total, and all T4 components net +(5%x4)x3=60% total, making the maximum cap 95%.

Mutations

You can mutate plants to A) change stats or B) mutate them into a different subspecies. To do this in a timely manner, you'll need to work with the Chemistry department.

The agonizingly slow way is using E-Z Nutriment to make the plant mutate once every time it's ready to harvest. Left 4 Zed makes it mutate twice, but kills the yield!

You can speed up the process to bearable levels by asking your local Chemist for a few bottles of Unstable Mutagen.

Pour 5 units on your plant and prepare for...

10% chance of mutation into a related species. This destroys the old plant and plants a new one. See the Plant reference chart for information on these mutations.

10% chance of the plant losing lots of health instantly. The plant can die because of this

15% chance of heavy stat mutation with a 3% chance of a new trait appearing.

15% chance of normal stat mutation.

20% chance of nothing. You get a message when this happens.

10% chance of weeds mutating. If weed level is less than 5, nothing happens, otherwise you get a random, special mutated weed (Kudzu, Deathnettle, Destroying Angel, Liberty Cap).

10% chance of pests mutating. Again, if pest level is less than 5, nothing happens. Otherwise, spiderlings are spawned.

This is bad. If the spiderlings escape, they'll grow big and you'll likely get lynched.

Or, if you don't want to bother with species mutation, pour 2 units for a guaranteed heavy stat mutation with a 3% chance of a new trait appearing, or even 1 for a guaranteed normal stat mutation. This method is safe even if you don't have backup seeds, and you can use a bottle for it.

You can use radium and uranium, but they cause ill effects, and if you can get radium, you can get mutagen.

R&D can also make a wonderful thing called a Floral Somatoray. It has two options: increase yield and mutate the plant. In yield more mode, every time you fire it at the plant, there is a chance the yield will increase. The chance becomes very small when you reach high levels, but it's very useful for low-yield plants. It can even raise yield from zero! In mutation mode, it will always induce a normal stat mutation.

Fixing awful stats

Mutating plants has a chance of really ruining stats. Luckily, there are a few ways to fix them:

Using 5u of unstable mutagen on high weed level trays results in different plants:

Kudzu, Deathnettle, Destroying Angel, Liberty Cap

Other Notes

Growing your own mutagen

Not robust enough to steal a chem dispenser? Try this out.

First, plant pumpkins and mutate them into blumpkins.

Now, insert their Chlorine production trait into glowshrooms and remove the Nutriment one.

That's it! You now have a plant that grows unstable mutagen - just pop the produce into the grinder.

You might want to add Densified Chemicals from Redbeets as well as Perennial Growth to optimize your harvest.

Upgrading plant trays

Composting enough plants that contain Earthsblood (for example Ambrosia Gaia) into a tray will give it a golden shine. Now it will no longer require water, fertilizer or weed/pest removal.

This is great in combination with plants that have the Perennial Growth trait! A lot of Botanists will upgrade their trays before getting started with actual hydroponics.

Upgraded trays permanently contain the last fertilizer you used before the upgrade. Robust Harvest is usually the best choice.

Instead of keeping the original Gaia plant that most likely has gimped stats - insert the Earthsblood production trait into a more robust plant.

If your DNA extractor hasn't been upgraded yet: Wheat has a production speed of 1 and good overall stats. If you're lucky, your station will have 50 potency Wheat bushels just lying around at roundstart.

You can speed up the process by removing all contents but Earthsblood production and adding the Densified Chemicals (Redbeet) trait.

Kudzu

Usual plant stats affect active kudzu in the specific way:

Potency of the seed will make kudzu mutate more on spread, the chance to mutate on each new piece is [potency / 10]

Production will affect how fast the kudzu can spread, usual kudzu spreads at a rate of 20% of the amount of pieces per tick but no more than 30, production changes the cap [30 * production / 50] and the percent of processed pieces per tick [20 * (production / 50)]

Killing the last piece of kudzu will create a kudzu seed on its place with all the mutations of the piece saved in the seed, so if you reactivate it new first piece will have all the same mutations the seed has and will spread it to all the progenitors.

Kudzu can gain mutations only on spread, here is the list of all of them:

Vine eating - minor negative mutation, vines with this mutation will eat vines without it

Toxicity - negative mutation, eating vine with this mutation or walking thought it will cause you toxin damage

Aggressive spreading - negative mutation, on spreading vines will cause effect of mini-explosion on the tile they spread to, mobs buckled by this vine will also experience effects akin to minor explosion

Adding 5u of phenol will remove a random minor negative mutation with a 20% probability

Adding 5u of sterilizine will remove a random negative mutation with a 20% probability

Adding 15u of blood will change the production value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -5 to +15

Adding 5u of amatoxin will change the production value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -15 to +5

Adding 5u of plasma will change the potency value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -15 to +5

Adding 10u of holy water will change a potency value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -5 to +15

Sandstone and Soil

If you pick up the grass and use it (click on it in your hand), you will prepare astroturf. Get a crowbar and remove some floor tiles, then place astroturf in their place. In addition to looking nice, it can be used to get some sand. Just dig it with your spade and you'll get two piles. Now, pick up the sand and use it; you will make a sandstone brick. Using three bricks, you can make a soil plot, which is like a tray, except you can walk over it and there are no lights. You can also build a sandstone door with 10 bricks.

Science can build hydroponics trays. They can also upgrade them by replacing the matter bins, and this increases the water and nutrient capacity of the tray.

Wood and Drying Racks

First you need to get some tower-caps, grow them and harvest them. You can then use hatchet (and some other things, but it's not important) on the logs to chop some planks. They have many uses: you can make chairs, tables, wooden floors and so on. A unique thing here is a drying rack. You can use it to dry a plant, and then smoke it. First, build a rack with 10 planks. Then, grab a plant you want to dry and put it in the rack. Click on the rack and toggle drying so that the red arrows light up. Give it a few seconds and it's done.

Note: you can dry any plant, and smoking it will give you all chemicals that were in it. You can smoke dried apples if you want, and get nutriment from them.